Saint Kristos Samra

Kristos Samra (Ge'ez: ክርስቶስ ሠምራ, romanized: Kristos Šemra, c. 15th century) was an Ethiopian female saint who founded an eponym monastery in Lake Tana. She is one of Ethiopians over two-hundred indigenous saints and the earliest of about fourteen Ethiopian female saints. She is venerated by both the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, with her feast day on 30 August. Kristos Samra lived in the 15th century (no exact dates of her birth or death appear in her hagiography). The main source on her life is the Gadle Kristos Samra (The Life of Kristos Samra), a hagiography written in Ethiopic by a scribe named Filippos about her around 1508. Before she died, she told Filippos her biography and thirty of her visions. He wrote her hagiography at the monastery of Debre Libanos sometime between 1450 and 1508. A translation of two portions of the hagiography are available in English; a print version translated into Amharic is also available. According to her hagiography, the only contemporaneous source on her life, she was born into a wealthy and pious family from a frontier province in the Christian Ethiopian empire and married to the son of the emperor's own priest (priests can be married in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church). She gave birth to eight sons and two daughters. When she was around forty years old, one day she became enraged with a badly behaved maidservant and thrust a firebrand down her throat and the maidservant died. Then Kristos Samra felt terrible and guilty and prayed for God to restore the life of the maidservant. Fortunately, her prayer was answered and the maid was brought back to life. Kristos Samra, amazed by what happened, ansked herself "if God hears my prayer while I'm in this worldly life, how much will he answer my prayer in a monastery?" She decided to be a nun and started her journey to a spiritual life.